why pilates?

why Try pilates?

Pilates has the ability to offer us a unique depth and quality of movement. This can achieve a wide variety of results depending on your goals. The movements and equipment allow for full exploration of the body in motion or stabilization, and even allows for aided movement and support wherever needed. The versatility of Pilates is what makes teaching it and using it to reveal human potential a true joy. If you can imagine a movement system that would fit all your restrictions as well as push you past your own expectations, Pilates is it!

why pilates for scoliosis

Everyone can experience the benefits of really knowing their body. Deliberate Pilates is a wonderful way to use your mind while you exercise. Living with scoliosis and striving to improve your comfort level, strength, and health is a worthy and realistic effort. It's possible to learn scoliosis maintenance exercises for your rotation and lateral deviation safely and comfortably.

Considering how well you, or your client, know their scoliosis is a great place to start when exercising with scoliosis. If you are going to strengthen your body and learn to do scoliosis-safe Pilates, then gaining a knowledge and understanding of what the Pilates world calls body awareness is vital. Making any change to ones body should start from the inside out, literally. Moving deliberately involves learning to sense all of your movement first.

Next, there are gentle exercises that help people get to know the nooks and crannies or their movement strategies. For example; Do you have a plan for helping yourself cope with your current movement patterns and pain? Do you know your curves? Where is the curve's home in your spine? What movements irritate your body? What is your endurance like during daily life?

We all have an unconscious way of pushing through pain, but what if we listened to the pain and allowed it move us toward to feeling better? By being attentive to your body and increasing exercises like modified pilates, stretches, and creating mind-body connections you open yourself to learning what works for you.

I have a lumbar curve and a compensatory thoracic curve that are serious enough that I am a candidate for surgery. I know what it's like to be enjoying an evening and suddenly realize you need to be home immediately laying down. Even though those moments are far from enjoyable, they are signals that my body can use to help me get to work on a mind-body practice. I use my mind-practice I have learned in Pilates even when I’m lying still to embrace where my body is at that moment and create the brave path toward feeling better.

Pilates can be exciting and honest work. It is done with a knowledge of where you are coming from and accepting each bone and muscle as it is, and it will help you build your new body and awareness. This type of body awareness is rewarding. Facing pain is not fun of course, but gaining awareness is a gift. I try to focus on what else is going on with my body that might be contributing to my discomfort. Those are the places where I can begin using the tools Pilates offers: alignment, breath work, release work, and movement to make changes.

The thought of future relief can be a light at the end of this thoughtful tunnel. It will be the start to a journey of the body awareness you need to help you make informed decisions for your health.

A master teacher I very much admire, Marie-José Blom said, "You don't want to fix it, fixing it will do just that - fix or keep a spine in place….You want to build mobility." I enjoy her words so much because it's easier to focus on "fixing or getting rid of something", but it is rewarding to embrace reality with a positive lens! When we focus on knowing and sensing and not just results we allow ourselves to become what we were meant to be.